The Onion on China’s ASAT test: Americans Demand Military Response After Chinese Shoot Down DirecTV Satellite January 29, 2007 | Issue 43•05 WASHINGTON, DC—A citizens’ group presented a petition signed by nearly 75 million Americans to key members of Congress…
The fantastic photo is by Victor Minghir. FY-1 Charlie is now more than five hundred pieces of tracked debris (International Launch Designators 1999-025E – 1999-025WS). As a result, Leo Barhorst notes on the SeeSat Listserv, the Space Track catalogue has…
In my forthcoming book, one of the little nagging questions I couldn’t answer was why the DF-31 solid-fueled ICBM (IRBM, harumph) was taking so damn long. I said: “In 1996, NAIC predicted CSS‐X‐10 (DF‐31) deployment ‘about the turn of the…
I wanted to draw your attention to some of the discussion about the Chinese ASAT in the expert blogosphere. Pavel Podvig, Hans Kristensen, Noah Shachtman, the anonymous China Hand, and Cheryl Rofer all have great submissions. I’ve linked to most…
I’ve seen reports that China had three unsuccessful or non-intercept tests before the January 11th shootdown of FY-1C: MCINTYRE: According to U.S. government officials, after three misses, China last Thursday succeed in shooting down one of its own aging weather…
This diagram shows the debris from the Chinese ASAT test, as presented in a preliminary analysis by MIT’s Geoff Forden using his awesome new GUI Missile Flyout program (download). The debris, Geoff notes, … … split in orbits, with one…
Aviation Week now has the story—with pretty much the same details that I’ve been hearing. FY-1C was struck by a direct ascent ASAT launched from Xichang Space Center at 5:28 p.m. EST on January 11. The satellite was approximately 850…
I noticed this blurb on SEESAT today: I’ve been hearing murmurings around the community here in Washington that there may have been an extremely energetic event (satellite break-up?) in the last week or so in the LEO altitude range (700-1000…
Google Earth now has high resolution imagery of what is generally believed to be China’s Guangyuan plutonium production reactor. Click on the image for a .kmz file. The annotations are reproduced from David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Chinese Military Plutonium…
A new IISS Strategic Comment—“North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Continuing Reverberations”—confirms statements by US and South Korean officials that the NORKs gave the Chinese all of twenty minutes notice before the nuclear test: Chinese sources confirm that North Korea informed Beijing…
